So, disclaimer; between the time I wrote most of this post and now, a lot has come out of the woodwork about The Taken King. There are several concerns that, at least from the sounds of things, are going to be addressed in full or in part (further fuelling my suspicion that Year 1 was a giant Beta and designed to fleece an extra $60+ out of players, and that most of this content was cut due to budget/time/greed constraints by Activision), but without further ado, here is my (still not quite complete) 5221-word rant on Destiny:
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OK, so, longpost is going to be long.
First of all; the update. This goes a long way to fixing some of the more serious problems with PvP in Destiny at the moment. I'm a bit sad that I'm not going to get to use Gjallahorn before it gets nerfed, but honestly, the weapon is undeniably overpowered and has, as Bungie states, become a reason to 'gate' players out of group activities. That sucks, and it should never happen.
Everything else I'm OK with, except some of the more fundamental design decisions they're pursuing which I'll deal with later. Just all around a nice update that it's going to be interesting to feel the impact of.
Now, onto more general stuff. I'm gonna start with Crucible and then probably diverge into PvE stuff halfway through when I get sidetracked, and end up talking about what I think they should have done with the story, lol. But first! What Destiny does RIGHT:
- Movement, feel, gunplay. They really nailed this. As Sage says this has been a major focus for him with Destiny, I can definitely say that paid off. This is without a doubt still the best feeling to play shooter on the planet.
- ...
OK; Crucible!
The problems with Crucible are many and varied. But they fall into several major categories. The first is map design, and it's related to two general themes with Destiny; the maps are too small, because of the Sandbox (as in; the weapons, vehicles, and abilities in the designer toolbox). There is no sizeable map that runs differently than others. There is no Blood Gulch, nothing even the size of Zanzibar, or anything that has an indoor/outdoor dynamic to match. The reasons are simple - firstly, they want you to be able to play with the weapons you want. Having larger maps would rule out a lot of classes of weapon and make others dominant. I mean, sure, Bungie is good enough to allow for that, but they've elected not to, and instead make middle-size maps that are one-size-fits-all. Sure, most sniping is point-blank and fusion rifles exist in a no man's land of usefulness unless you're fantastic with them, but you know, the maps are pretty evenly spread between close quarters and I-can-sorta-justify-a-sniper range. Secondly, lack of vehicles. Aside from Sparrows, Pikes, and that not-a-tank Interceptor, there aren't any means of quick travel. Those work fine, but they're all sniper magnets. On a large map you're going to be tempting fate just getting on one. The flipside being a Pike or Interceptor will eat anyone caught without cover alive. And lastly, because they start locking themselves into singleplayer design decisions if they give too much space to a map - keeping them smaller allows more reusability of assets and requires no commitments to future solo play spaces.
What this means is that all matches feel the same, and all maps feel like they don't have a natural play style or flow - Bungie have had to shoe-horn sight lines into smaller maps to allow for longer range combat, and they've had to put right-angle bends and curves into bigger maps to break up sight lines and force closer combat. This would be fine - I mean, it's technically good design - but not only have they not pulled it off very well, it's the only thing on offer. It's like turning up to a supposed buffet and finding that all the dishes are some variation of meat and potatoes, in roughly 50/50 quantities. And it leads to maps that make no sense from an actual spatial perspective. A couple of the newer maps are better - Widow's Court, especially, actually feels like it could be a real space. But it's an exception, not the rule. None of them tie into the world the way Midship or Sword Base did in Halo, for example.
Second major category is loadouts, and it's a factor in almost everything wrong with the Crucible. I know what Bungie wants. I get it. I really do. It's your character, you use your gear that you're familiar with. It's a nice idea. Unfortunately, it
Does. Not. Work. Simply put - they can't balance the game. There are so many weapons, with so many perks, and now with reforging it's an even bigger mess, and
all of those weapons need to work in PvP too. This was always going to be a problem. When I heard about the Crucible and that there would be Crucible-specific gear that, if you saw someone wearing it, would indicate they were a seasoned veteran of PvP, compared to someone who mainly plays PvE and has their own set of recognisable gear, I was excited. I never imagined that Bungie would let you take the same gear into both modes. I never imagined that PvP gear would have an actual impact on your performance. Heck, I always thought the Crucible would be more like the Trials, and have a higher barrier to entry for the better gear, with more obvious rankings, for that matter. But enough about me; more about the fundamental issue here:
If you can't adequately balance your multiplayer, it's always going to be a problem. When there are hundreds of combinations of base stats and perks, and you need them to be effective in PvE too, you're fucked. When you also have six different classes, with 3*3*3*3 different perk arrangements each, you're really pushing the limits of what it is possible to control. They've done well, but we're really starting to see the effects of the cross-bleed. And they clearly never imagined players were going to have (and spend) 2 bajillion Motes on reforging.
They really, *really* should have gone with a set of loadouts. It should have been; pick a Class. Pick a Subclass, pick one of two variations on that Subclass. Select your Primary and Special weapon combination, which come in predetermined pairs. Pick from a couple of options for scopes/perks on each. And then....
earn cosmetic upgrades to make the weapons look how you want. Never PvE-Exotic skins, ofc, but unique Crucible cosmetic upgrades. The same for your armour. You can make it look however, but you've got to buy/be rewarded with the right cosmetic first.
Secondly (because the above removes the fundamental issue of Exotics in PvP, which, even without the above change, should not be allowed), NO. Heavy. Weapon. The heavy weapon drops should have been just that - weapon drops. Fuck it, drop a random Exotic weapon in if you really want to - first person there gets Thorn with two mags. Or lucks out and gets Truth. But 99 times out of 100 it should drop one machine gun and/or one rocket launcher or two of one type, with one mag (2 rockets, maybe 3, and 30-50 rounds). Not 4 rockets
per team member for people running around with reforged Grenades and Horseshoes blindfire rocket launchers...I mean, the fuck? Again, these drops should have been more randomised (no 5 minute timer and a single/two locations with icons over them). Again, I know what Bungie was aiming for. I really do. But it doesn't work how they want it to - the team that is winning gets the Heavy Ammo and starts winning MORE. Or the losing team gets there only to be Super'd collectively, and then the other team gets the Heavy Ammo and doubles-down on the 3 or 4 kills they just got. This is a serious problem with Crucible that is caused by Bungie's attempt to give a team a chance at a comeback, and the ridiculous weapons we can currently take into the arena.
Thirdly; Supers. I'm torn on these. I'm thinking if the rest of the playing field was more level, they might be OK. On the other hand, they have the same issue as Heavy Ammo - they tend to result in the team that is winning, winning more. I would like to see them evened out so that there's sort of a max charge rate - but I think overall Supers have less direct effect on a matches outcome than 4 rockets do, especially as some of them are more defensive/tactical than others. Heck, Blink and Shoulder Charge are arguably more useful than a Defender bubble at the moment, lol! Probably the only ones that really need tweaking are the Warlock Nova Bomb and the Titan Fist of Havoc, especially the latter. It is too much of a clutch ability with the boost to defense it gets and the near-zero activation time. Bladedancer can be absurdly effective, but there are ways to bring them down and it isn't a one-push kill button. Again, by controlling the environment more and not offering certain perks it becomes vastly easier to balance.
And the thing is...none of this has to be a major thing. Because Iron Banner. I mean...IRON BANNER. The solution is RIGHT THERE. Crucible? That's literally a series of rooms in the Tower that are functionally holodecks. (Seriously, you should be able to walk there as well as visit via the Navigator - it would make a LOT more sense lore-wise than actually flying to Mercury...a planet we've never been to in solo, and is controlled by the Vex, to have inter-Guardian fights to the death >.> I mean, I tend to assume that's what the Crucible is anyway, but it's not very explicit in-game other than that it *is* live-fire and Ghosts revive you...thanks, not-in-game-Grimoire!) Then you have the IRON BANNER, which is your bring-your-own-gear. This way you have; pure skill in a balanced environment, and skill in your own gear in an unbalanced environment modes. Boom. Best of both worlds. And Trials comes in as a different version of IB.
Problem fucking solved.
Now, full disclosure; I was a SWAT guy in Halo times. I like my PvP to be leaner and more about putting sights on target than whether my opponent is running a power weapon or not. But I think there's room for movement in the direction of "less unbalanced" in Crucible and I see no reason why we can't make use of both types of play when we already have two playlists that allow for that distinction, and there's now a third playlist showing that Bungie isn't afraid of running more varieties of PvP.
Now, onto some more generic problems;
Currency. I simply don't understand where they were going with this. We've got half a dozen currencies AT LEAST in the game so far, they all do different things, and they're all earned in different ways, and we've got twice as many vendors who sell various selections of stuff or nothing useful.
Glimmer - catch-all currency, earned from almost everything, doesn't buy much worthwhile now except one special ship and some ammo synths, but is used in most purchases.
Vanguard Marks - earned from PvE activities, buys Vanguard gear.
Crucible Marks - earned from PvP activities, buys Crucible and Faction gear.
Motes of Light - earned from experience/engrams, buys crap from the Speaker and used for reforging.
Strange Coins - earned from engrams/Weekly Heroic Strikes/other high level activities - buys Exotic items from Xur.
That covers the base content. Then we have;
Passage Coins - earned randomly from bounties/Ether Chests? Buys stuff for Trials of Osiris.
Armour Cores - earned from PoE, buys armor from Variks.
Weapon Cores - earned from PoE, buys weapons from Variks.
On top of this, we have a few consumables being used lieu of currency for DLC content, and half of these currencies come with additional faction rep requirements - can you say 'overcomplicated'?
There is also the confounding decision to allow Crucible faction rep to be earned when playing PvE content, but only allowing you to spend Crucible Marks on their stuff, and not allowing you to earn Vanguard rep when playing PvP, and not having any Vanguard faction vendors except the Quartermaster/class Vanguard. I don't understand this, either from a story/world perspective or from a gameplay perspective. At the very least, the Faction vendors should have been Mark-neutral.
To actually fix the problem, though, there should not have been a distinction between Marks. Either Glimmer should have been the common currency (and rarer) or Marks should have been generic and you can spend them on either cosmetic Crucible upgrades or PvE gear from various vendors - and the Faction vendors should have had both types of item to allow you to display your loyalty in both game types, or there should have been none of this 'wearing a Faction Class Item applies rep gains to that faction' nonsense, as it makes no sense for purely PvE players to be able to earn rep but not buy things from them.
There is also the case of the weekly and inventory earn limits. 200 is too low. 25k glimmer is too low and random. Strange Coins have no limit, Motes have no limit, and players know it. My god some people have a truly absurd amount of Strange Coins. You start running three characters through the Heroic a week and you will never have to worry about Strange Coins again.
But here's the thing. 200 Marks per character. 600 total. BUT if those characters are different classes? Sorry, the only thing you can trade are weapons. So if you want a certain loadout for your Warlock, you have to buy the gear with their Marks (full set costs 345, so that's two max-cap expenses, and in practical terms it's four week's worth of farming Marks as you can only earn 100 a week...) and while you can buy weapons with the other characters you have, you still need to be hitting the Mark cap each and every week for two weeks with two characters to buy two weapons along with your character you're grinding for gear, and you need to have 150 on each character, as it's not like you can spend 150 on one and then give the other 50 to another character to top them off to 150. I mean...grind, much?
The only way around this is to run triplicate characters, but not only is that kind of weird, it's not very interesting. So then to load out all three of your characters fully (let's say two weapons, and a full set of gear, we're talking 645 Marks each - this *should* be just over two week's of earning per character (6 weeks of grinding to equip all three), but it's not, because you're always going to end up with odd numbers of Marks left over after you buy gear that you just can't spend and you can't buy class gear for your other characters. So it's actually a full three weeks at least, per character. That's 9 weeks of grinding Crucible Marks. Just to equip your character. I mean...sure, it's nice that you can't just walk into a full set of gear, but at the very least *I should be able to do this just as quickly with only character for one full set of gear*. But I can't.
With only one character, my earn limit is 100 Marks. Which means it takes SEVEN weeks to equip one character. Meanwhile, a guy with three characters has loaded out all three of them almost to the same point?
And PvE characters are in the same boat. If you've got one character, you can get 9 Strange Coins. If you've got three, you get
twenty-seven. Again, I'm sorry but what? At least you can stock these up indefinitely, but what the hell sort of game punishes players for not have multiple characters? If you like playing one class, you're even better off, because you don't need to buy different exotic gear. But either way you can buy twice as much if you have more than one character.
And yet, what they limited across accounts...was...Glimmer? The one thing that allows me to buy NOTHING except consumables (and ships which are so cheap and rarely bought it's not really worth mentioning, except Ceres Galliot) which are useful but you probably don't need more than 5 of each anyway, you decided to cap at 25k, and make it so there's no real way to earn it in quantity other than burning more consumables which are on RNG drop only...I just don't understand.
One, global limit for a generic form of Marks might have made sense. So that when new content releases you can't just throw money at it. But Glimmer isn't used like that, and Marks are so tightly limited on a per-character basis that it actively disadvantages players with one character? Backwards. Totally backwards.
While we're at it - why can't buy different class armours? There's no reason, when I can buy and trade weapons. When I still need to play the same amount on another character to earn the Marks. Either allow me to share Marks or allow me to share gear.
Ghosts.
They're useless. Near as I can tell there's only one shell that's readily obtainable (pre-order exclusive) to trade out, maybe there are 9 others (pending TTK giving more), and they do...nothing. They're cosmetic. Where is the attachment and customisation to make your Ghost a meaningful part of your experience?
I'll tell you where it *should* have been - Ghosts should have been integral for expanding your gameplay options. Larger inventory? That's a Ghost upgrade. Binoculars? Ghost upgrade. Ability to access your Vault from landside? Ghost upgrade. Enemy scanning? Thermal imaging? Ghost upgrades.
And you know what? They should have cost Glimmer. TRUCKLOADS of glimmer. And needed special requirements, materials, or quests to be completed to obtain. And they should have been based around what Ghost Frame you were using. Better frames give you more slots, or slots that can take better upgrades. Not only does this make total sense, it invests you in your Ghost and give you another way to make your Guardian your own.
Want to auto-breakdown anything that not's Legendary? There's a Ghost mod for that.
Want in-field Engram decryption (at the cost of reduced Cyrptarch rep gains)? There's a Ghost mod for that (or, more specifically, several - better ones allow you to auto-decrypt better Engrams, or give you better chances of higher-tier loot).
There is SO. DAMN. MUCH. That they both could and should have done with this. Dinklebot would be more than a two-line wonder, more than a glorified transport menu. He'd be a part of your character.
Onwards! The Navigator should have been directly accessible from playspaces. There is almost no reason I can think of to force a manual return to Orbit, then a choice of destination. Why not just choose your destination and run straight through Orbit in cinematic and onto the next loading screen? Not saying you shouldn't be able to "go to Orbit" but it shouldn't have been *necessary*.
Weapons...Bungie are doing a lot right now to rebalance weapons, but I think there are a few flaws in their Sandbox that are making this hard. They *want* Hand Cannons to be close-to-medium range weapons, and they *want* Scout Rifles to be medium-to-long range weapons. Then they wonder why HCs have too much range and are overpowered in all game modes? Surely Hand Cannons and Scout Rifles should have a gap between them in their range-of-effectiveness, rather than occupying mostly the same space and therefore making the much higher-Impact Hand Cannons the only sensible choice? It gets worse when Bungies adds that Assault Rifles are supposed to be close-to-mid range weapons. No wonder the nerf killed them - it made them much less useful versions of Hand Cannons (because Precision Damage Bonus > rate of fire), I mean, they're literally targeted at the same space? Where exactly were ARs supposed to excel? They don't do enough damage for crowd control or harrying attacks. So they're clearly supposed to be single-target weapons like everything else. But they have insufficient Impact x RoF to have a comparable Time to Kill as HCs.
The same problem is rearing its head with Fusion Rifles - except Fusion Rifles occupy a middle ground in a poor fashion. They're very skill-based weapons, but if you're good with a FR you'll be good with a Shotgun so you might as well use that instead for mostly the same effect. Meanwhile, they don't have sufficient range to make them competitive with Snipers. Again, I feel like this weapon has been misapplied - it's a single-target weapon that really should have been for crowd control. Even the charge-up time before it can fire makes it more suited for something like this, than for putting massive damage on one target. Nothing against them - they're a beast if you can land your hits, and that's cool - but they just occupy this empty space.
Grenades don't have enough utility in PvP. They sort of sit between a "clearing out the weak adds" and "need a bit more damage on this major" area, and they struggle with both. There are some great grenades on offer - and they work well in PvP - but a lot of them just don't seem to be effective given you take so long to charge them up. I would have liked to see some sort of dynamic like the weapons - weaker, faster charging grenades vs stronger, less frequent grenades. Maybe it's just because Halo let you have so many and didn't rely on a cooldown, but I just feel like I don't have my grenade up enough, and I have to consciously make sure I use it rather than save it because of that perception - and often I'll use it only to need it 1 second before it fully charges.
Similarly, though we're getting this a bit more in TTK, more tactical grenades - they're all much of a muchness at the moment, but we could have done with some that are more about crowd control and area denial, or time-buying. No, the Tripmine grenade does not count. It comes down to the fact that only being able to have a grenade that does A or B or C and not swap them quickly makes for a much more limited application. And part of that comes down to them not being a "limited" resource like most grenades, and that's a nice change, but I think the charge rate at the moment would have made it OK for you to run an alternative type of grenade at the same time - in PvE anyway.
So a lot of the last few paragraphs were stuff that Bungie could still conceivably do (I suspect some of the Ghost stuff might be coming in TTK) but I'm going to go on more of a "if I'd been building the game" tangent now*:
Classes. As much as there is some differentiation between classes, Destiny falls very much into the Skyrim trap. The Classes are mostly superficial choices - and more problematic, there is little variation between players of the same class. You can play however you want with any class. This is good. However, this also means there is almost no specialization and therefore no distinction between them in terms of playstyle. At most you're looking at certain jumps or grenades being locked out, and that's it. You can spec a Hunter for max armour. And you should be able to - but it should be about defining your role in the team. A max armour Hunter should be all about playing up front and shotgunning, because they should be slower and less agile. A max agility Hunter should be about hit-and-run tactics, because they're glass cannons. And those should be the extremes of Hunters. A more balanced Hunter build should be built for getting into a sniper spot and providing support. They don't want to punched in the face because they can't take the hit - but they also do a lot of precision damage in one go. That gives you three archetypes that allow for varied playstyles. Close quarters, tactical, and ranged support.
Titans can either take a lot of hits and tank, or they can be more about dishing the damage and then ducking away to recover. Their in-between option is more of a mid-range covering fire/buffing approach. Tank, DPS, buff support.
Warlocks then, are left with a few options; personally, I think it makes sense for Warlocks to be more about using their Light a lot in favour of weapons, but maybe that's just me. Their primary function should be a DPS-support area, with options to either go more support or more DPS, but always being more about bridging that gap between Titans and Hunters and occupying a more stat-neutral build that allows them to plug gaps. This class would then have area buffs, area attacks, crowd control abilities - because their main job should be crowd control. They'd be all about getting their abilities up as fast as possible.
There is no crowd control in Destiny. And this irks me. For a game built around party mechanics, for there to be no CC and no real role specs is kinda strange - never mind that while there is undoubtedly some synergy between players and classes, it's really not necessary or very prevalent, perhaps excepting the Raids.
Of course, this is all optional - you can certainly try and spec your Hunter to be a tank, it just won't be *as* good as a Titan *can* be, and you might be missing a few handy perks. On that note, the 'armour' attribute should be replaced with 'strength' to max the idea of agility and recovery - it should do largely the same thing but should affect large weapon handling and possibly inventory space. But that's optional.
The reason you don't want to force class specs is because Destiny can be played as a single player experience (mostly) and that's great - lone wolf Guardians should very much be a thing and there is always PvP to consider where things like CC are not so useful (or are too powerful).
The other thing is, I feel like the way the grenades and jumps are split between subclasses is silly - they should be limited by damage type, and you should choose that separately, in place of an outright "subclass", and instead you should have access to both trees in different forms (obviously quite different to cater for the role spec'ing) and have to pick your path a bit more between the two.
On the note of damage types - let's talk ammunition.
Ammo synths are wonderful things. Enemies should drop less ammo. You should be able to use a special and heavy synth at will without having to wait for both of them to cool down after each other. But they should cost more. Possibly have an inventory cap that gets modified by your Ghost.
However. Weapon damage types should all be kinetic. What should make Legendary weapons more special, is the ability to swap their damage type out using expendables. Got a Legendary sniper? See a guy with Void shields? He's pretty tough. Guess you better whip out that super-rare mag of Void Sniper Rounds. You get one mag. Once it's in your gun, you have to use it or lose it. But it's more effective than the current version. There can be more variety with these too - ammo that bypasses shields, ammo that has splash damage. Rockets of course benefit from this massively - throw an Arc rocket in the tube and enjoy dead Fallen. Oh, what's that? non-Exotic rocket launchers don't get cluster rounds a perk, but rather than as an expendable? Yes, please.
This brings me back around to weapons - why are we all running around with Legendary and Exotic weapons? Why are these not RARE? We should be using level 30 Uncommons for the most part. Maybe one level 28 Legendary. And those, past level 20, shouldn't be level requirements but indications of performance.
At the same time, they should be more customisable, aesthetically. Add suppressors, whatever. Paint. But they shouldn't all be Legendaries. Why? Because the way the system currently works, everyone uses the exact same gear. We've all got Raid set. Or we've all got Gjallahorn. Or we've all got Fatebringer, or the Kellbreaker's stuff. No matter where you look, anyone over the level 28 hump is using pretty much the same gear. Shaders don't help, because they apply in the same manner. Even emblems are mostly of the same few types. Those unique weapons should be genuinely RARE. You shouldn't want Thorn because
every other player has it, you should want Thorn because you saw one guy six months ago who had it.
So customisation - let us set our own Primary/Secondary/Highlight colours like in Halo. I'm sorry, but that system was just BETTER. It meant people could look different. Still, by all means, make us hunt for colours or rare two-tone Primary/Secondary colours, whatever, before we can use them. But let us assign it. The number of Shaders multiplied by the number of armours actually in use is vastly smaller than the variations we'd get in style if you could choose your own colours to some degree. Shaders should just be presets or special combos. Heck, go the Two Worlds route - if I get a new set of armour that has better stats but is ugly? Let me swap the stats and appearance with my current set by merging the two. Then you'd have Guardians that actually, you know, look different to each other. >.>
Same vein - why are class items so stupid? Bungie half sold this game on being able to customise your gear and look. Why are armours, and class items (namely the two things that define your look the most) class restricted? If I want to wear a lighter, Hunter-style armour and the Ram, why can't I? Sure, you want specific looks for Hunters. OK. So what is there to customise? I *have* to wear Legendary/Exotic gear of some description. So the only class item I have is a Bond. Cool enough. (Still can't get over the one that says "Mm, yes, a fine cloak. But on my arm I have a supercompressed supercollider. Can your cloak split quarks, sir?", ROFL), and those are all much of a muchness. The only class with an item that changes their look are Hunters. Again - where is the customisation? Where are the options to control how I look? Or even how I perform? Heavy/Medium/Light armour would be *such* an easy way to help spec your playstyle, and if you combined it with less class item nonsense and more aesthetic item choices, you'd be giving a lot better experience to most players.
I think I've already covered my concerns with boss battles and the like in the past - those still stand. Though I will give credit to the Cabal boss in the Prison of Elders. Because he has shields which change damage type each time they regenerate. It's a shame he's just a boss in the PoE, but that's a much better fight for it. Really good mechanic, and I'm glad
I thought of it Bungie put it in.
ETA - Also; where the fuck are ambient creatures and environments? There's no fauna! Is everything *except* humans dead?
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Congratulations if you read all that. My apologies for what is probably a mid-train-of-thought abrupt finish. XD
Suffice it to say, I have more to say. I'm sure after a month of TTK I'll have more to talk about but in the meantime it feels a bit redundant to be criticising a game that is about to receive an update which is already in the process of fixing this stuff.
Also; I think the only other game series I've done something like this for is The Elder Scrolls, and I guess the modern-warfare themed FPS genre because there is so much I wish that genre did to balance realism and gameplay better. It goes to show how much I like the game, despite what is a long, long list of flaws and some fundamental issues I have with the way the game is set up to be a Skinner Box, etc. That, and how much I love Bungie, who are awesome, but have had a noticeable fall from their history of awesomeness after losing Staten and Marty, and a few others. But still, I wouldn't do this for a game I didn't care about, so yeah.
Khellendros 
King Briar, on 27 August 2015 - 03:27 AM, said:
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